Time to post some pictures!!

Well, the time has come! I have to post a bunch of pictures from all our trips to Amsterdam.....for two reasons...

1) Aunt Sue bought Justice an MP3 Player for Christmas and it just so happens to use the same memory card as my camera. I don't think I'll ever see my spare 128 mg card again.

2) We're going to Amsterdam AGAIN!!!!!!! Jeff heads out on 3/31/06 and will be there for a week alone. The kids and I fly out on 4/7/06 - a 5 hour flight to Reijakiv, Iceland (with a 2 hour layover during what will be the middle of the night for us) and then a 3 hour flight to Amsterdam! Yes, I have gone totally insane! At this point the kids are pretty experienced travellers though, so I know we will do fine. We will be gone for 3 weeks, so I know I need to free up some camera space for more pictures to share with you all!

The following pictures were taken during our Thanksgiving 2005 trip to Amsterdam. We took a train from Amsterdam Central Station to Den Haag (The Hague), the Netherlands.

Madurodam is a "Miniature Holland". All of the different areas of the Netherlands are respresented in miniatures - like little dollhouses. The details are amazing. This was our second trip to Madurodam because the kids just love it!




Justice "wearing" a pair of big Dutch wooden clogs.



Jagger couldn't wait for his turn!



And of course Journey had to have his turn!



Justice thought it was hilarious when a real bird would land on one of the replicas - the birds looked so enormous on the little buildings - he kept saying "Attack of the killer birds!"



Jagger wasn't sure what to think of the little buildings at first. All he wanted to do was TOUCH TOUCH TOUCH!


Journey thought it was cool that he was almost as tall as some of the buildings!



A replica of the famous story about the boy who put his finger in the hole in the dike and saved his whole town from flooding.




Outside Madurodam. Jeff was trying to get out of the picture, but I caught him!



Flags of the different states within the Netherlands fly outside of Madurodam. They also have a really neat sign that looks like a street sign, but points in all directions, giving distances (in kilometers) to major cities like New York, Tokyo, London, and Sydney.



The kids were fighting over who got to sit where in the biggest Dutch clog of all....Justice has his spot claimed!



Justice



Journey



Journey and Jagger look at the replica of the Ajax Football Team Stadium (to you Americans, that means soccer!)











The care-free hippy boy Journey. We convinced him to get his hair cut since then (although not by much!) and his front teeth have grown in, but I still love this picture! Journey is absolutely in love with the Netherlands and wants to move there some day. One of his school projects was to write and illustrate a book about something he likes to do. Of course he chose Madurodam! The book is going to be bound in hardback and we should receive it sometime at the end of April.



3 Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bridge



Justice



Replica of Central Station. Someday I'll post a pic of the real one next to this one so you can compare (of course you could always just sort back through the million pictures I have posted in this blog and find it yourself!)



Magna Plaza - the details are amazing!



The Queen's Palace - looks exactly like the real thing!



Muiderslot Castle in Muiden. We have attempted to visit the real castle numerous times, but something always keeps us from going. I'm afraid this might be as close to it as we ever get!



The thing the kids love the most about Madurodam is the little "passports" that they hand out to the children when we go in. Each passport has interesting facts and a little game that you play where they have a picture of a replica and you have to wander around and find it and fill in it's number. When you are finished you take the passport back to the main office and they stamp it with the official Madurodam seal!